Standup Guy (10 page)

Alvin Griggs was called into his boss’s office during what would ordinarily have been his coffee break, and told to sit down. He did.

“Al, we’ve taken in six more series 1966 hundred-dollar bills,” the AIC said. “Two of them at Fort Lauderdale International Airport, where somebody, we don’t know who, yet, paid cash for an airline ticket, we don’t know where to, yet.”

“And the others?”

“Two at the Greyhound bus station ticket office in Miami—again from whom and to where remain to be determined. Then there was one given to a livery driver in Miami and deposited into his bank account, and one—this will amuse you—taken from a high-end hooker who got busted.”

Griggs was not amused. “So, the money is being used for the purposes of travel and entertainment? Sounds like tourists to me—two of whom were on their way home to wherever. It occurs to me, too, that since we have found so few of these notes, not
very much of the money is in circulation—certainly not seven million dollars of it.”

“I’m entertaining the notion that what we’ve found is like the fuse to a bomb.”

“You mean, if we follow the trail, it will blow up in our faces? I tend to agree.”

“Very funny, Al.”

“I wasn’t trying to be funny. I believe one person has all the money, and that he’s spent it rather sparingly while he figures out how to launder it. What we’re picking up didn’t come directly from that person’s hands. We’re getting it two or three generations of spenders away from him. One guy wouldn’t be taking both an airplane and a Greyhound bus out of South Florida.”

“You have a low opinion of this case, don’t you, Al?”

“It’s just that we seem to be in a lose-lose situation. The best we can hope for is to identify the guy who has the seven million dollars from the robbery, and if we do, all we’ll do is make the FBI look smart when we turn him over, and we both know they’re not all that smart.”

“Don’t you think it would be satisfying to find the guy who has all the cash?”

“Not particularly. He couldn’t be charged with stealing it, because the guy we know stole it died a few weeks ago, and because the statute has run out on the crime. The very worst that could be done with him is a charge of receiving stolen property, and I’m not so sure that, after so long, it’s even stolen property. And that particular crime isn’t what we’re tasked to investigate. Honest to God, boss, I don’t know why you’re so enchanted with this case. I mean, it’s not even a case.” Griggs could have gone on, but he
sensed he was getting very close to the edge of insubordination, so he stopped.

“Al, if you were in possession of this money, what would you do with it?”

“I’d get it into a foreign bank, pronto,” Griggs said. “Before I could spend another dime of it.”

“Where?”

“The Bahamas, maybe, or the Caymans. Then I’d begin drawing on my balance in nice, new notes and start spending it like a drunken sailor. I think it’s extremely unlikely that a foreign bank would even notice that the bills are old, and even if they did, why would they care? Pretty soon the money will be making its way around the world, from account to account and pocket to pocket. It probably already is.”

The AIC heaved a deep sigh. “All right, Al, you’ve convinced me. You’re off the case. Go find me some counterfeit money, or something.”

“Thank you, boss.” Griggs got out of there as fast as he could.

• • •

Stone got to the restaurant five minutes early, and Hank Cromwell turned up on time, in a smashing little black dress and pearls and a rather large handbag. They exchanged cheek kisses, and he liked her perfume.

“What would you like to drink?” he asked.

“An Absolut martini, straight up, with a fistful of olives. And then another, please.”

“I’ll try to avoid gaps between drinks.”

Their drinks came, and they touched glasses and sipped.

“Are you armed tonight?” she asked.

Stone snapped his fingers. “Damn it, I forgot!”

“If somebody had fired at my front door, I’d be walking around with a shotgun,” Hank said.

“I can’t imagine where you’d hide it—certainly not in that dress.”

“I’ll bet if I carried it openly, nobody would bother me.”

“Nobody but one or more police officers.”

“Well, there is that. I did go armed for a while, during one period of my life.”

“What period of your life was that?”

“The period when I was endeavoring to obtain a complete and final exit from the company of an Italian gentleman who had a lot of friends with broken noses and bulges under their silk suits.”

“And how long did that period last?”

“About seven months, before he finally got discouraged. He was very persistent.”

“How on earth did you become involved with him?”

“Well,” she said, “I met him at the bar at P.J. Clarke’s. How about that for a coincidence?”

Stone laughed. “You must spend a lot of time at Clarke’s.”

“Been there exactly twice—met him the first time and you the second. I’m hoping for better from you.”

“I’ll try not to disappoint you.”

She patted his cheek with a cool hand. “You’re sweet.”

“How did you find out the Italian guy was connected?”

“Connected?”

“A Mafioso.”

“It took me a little while, actually. He told me he was in the
auto parts business, but I didn’t realize the parts were all secondhand and that he was running something called a chop shop in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Still is, for all I know.”

“Would it make you happy if I had him arrested?”

“I thought you were no longer a cop.”

“I’m not, but my best friend in the world is. Would you like me to mention his name to Dino?”

She looked thoughtful. “I must admit, the notion of his being behind bars has a lot to recommend it, but the possible consequences don’t. I’d have to testify against him, wouldn’t I?”

“Did you ever visit his place of business?”

“No, I finally just put two and two together. He used only cash, no credit cards or checks, and he peeled it off a roll the size of your fist, which was secured with a rubber band. And, as an afterthought, there was the .45 in the shoulder holster.”

“Then you wouldn’t make much of a witness,” Stone said, “since you don’t know anything. He could be just an honest businessman with an unreasoning fear of the IRS and other people with guns. Still, the cops could nose around Red Hook and see what they find.”

“I’m sure they’d find a garage full of Porsche and Mercedes hulks. That was what he drove, and it was never the same car twice.”

“Who was this guy?”

“One Onofrio Buono,” she said. “Known as Bats, and not because he was crazy.”

“Buono is a familiar name,” Stone said.

“He’s the only one of those I ever met.”

“A gentleman of the same surname, one Eduardo Buono, led a heist at Kennedy Airport a long time ago, during which fifteen million dollars in cash abruptly changed ownership. Half of it was never recovered, and the elder Mr. Buono died in prison quite recently. Any of that ring a bell?”

“Not really. I mean, I suppose Bats had a father named Buono, but he hardly ever came up in conversation.”

“Can you remember a time when he did?”

“Bats mentioned, once, that his father used to beat the shit out of his mother, a trait that I came to believe was genetically handed down from generation to generation.”

“Was he abusive to you?”

“Just once. He slapped me around early one evening, and I got him slapped in jail for the remainder of it. I immediately took a two-week vacation to nowhere, and my car drove itself to an island in Maine. It was in February, and it wasn’t much fun.

“When I got back there were a lot of dead flowers on my doorstep and a lot of unopened mail spattered with teardrops. That was when the persistence began, followed shortly by the obtaining of a temporary restraining order that was meant to keep him at least a hundred yards from me but, of course, didn’t work, resulting in two further visits to Rikers Island by Mr. Buono.”

“How did you finally get rid of him?”

“I had him visited in jail by a very large actor friend of mine, who specialized in portraying murderous hulks, and who explained to him what would happen to his various limbs and his brains if he did not immediately fall out of love with me.”

“And that worked?”

“From what I heard later, it was my friend’s finest work as an actor, a performance so convincing that it would surely have won him, in a different venue than Rikers, an Oscar nomination.”

Their dinner arrived and was happily consumed. “Are you armed?” Stone asked at one point.

“Not tonight.”

“Then what’s in the giant handbag?”

“A fresh thong and a change of clothes for work tomorrow. I thought I might share your bed tonight, if there’s room.”

“I’ll make room,” Stone said.

Stone was awakened, as the first rays of dawn came through the slatted blinds, by a cool hand on his warm crotch, to which he immediately responded.

At the end of this encounter, Stone asked, “Do you always get up so early?”

“Seven is early?”

“It is around here.”

“I’m usually at work by eight, eight-thirty at the latest.”

“What would you like for breakfast?”

“What’s available?”

“Almost anything you can imagine, in the breakfast line.”

“Two eggs, over easy, sausages, toast, orange juice, and strong black coffee sweetened with a carcinogen.”

Stone called down to the kitchen and ordered for both of them, then retrieved the
Times
and the
Daily News
from the dumbwaiter. He raised the head and foot of the bed sufficiently to cradle them while they read and ate. “Tell me,” he said, when they were comfortable, “do you have any remaining friends in common with Mr. Buono?”

“If you knew his friends, you wouldn’t have to ask.”

“I was wondering if there’s anyone you know who might be aware of any possible connection between Onofrio and Eduardo Buono.”

“Nope. I should think your best bet for that sort of genealogy would be their respective police files. And I believe you have entrée, do you not?”

“I do, and a very good suggestion that is.”

At eight o’clock, Hank rolled out of bed and into a shower, and fifteen minutes later, she presented herself, dressed and packed. “That was my kind of evening,” she said, kissing him on the forehead. “Do you think we might repeat it in the not-too-distant future? I’m assuming you are not the sort of man who easily becomes violent and subsequently forms obsessive attachments to unwilling women.”

“You assume correctly, and I’d love to.”

“You have my number—in more ways than one,” she said. She kissed him on the lips and fled the premises.

• • •

After Stone had finished the crossword, he called Dino.

“Good afternoon,” Dino said.

“It’s nine in the morning.”

“That’s afternoon to someone who has to get up as early as I do.”

“Dino, in your present position, nobody is going to keep a time card on you. Go in later, like a gentleman.”

“I like to be in the office before things happen, not after. It’s good for my in-house reputation.”

“I need a favor.”

“Consider it granted, if I feel like doing it.”

“I’d like you to run a couple of names for me: Eduardo Buono and Onofrio Buono, who has the charming sobriquet of ‘Bats.’”

“What is it you want to know about them?”

“Are they related? If so, how? Were they close? Ever pull any jobs together? Like that.”

“I wouldn’t dirty my hands with that,” Dino said. “I’ll have somebody get back to you.”

“Many thanks.”

They hung up.

• • •

Stone was at his desk, mid-morning, when his phone buzzed.

“A detective Donatello for you on line one.”

“This is Stone Barrington, Detective.”

“Good morning. The chief asked me to get back to you with some info on the Buonos.”

“Thank you for calling. What did you learn?”

“Mostly what I already knew. Eddie is the uncle of Bats. The kid was a teenager when Eddie went away for the JFK heist, and he idolized his uncle. About a year before Eddie died in Sing Sing, Bats started visiting him every week, and a confidential informant told us the kid was bugging his uncle about what he did with the money from the heist. This attention apparently annoyed Eddie, and about a month before he died, when he was a patient in the infirmary, he cut the kid off, had him removed from
his list of approved visitors. The kid made a scene on his next visit and got booted into the street for his trouble. Anything else you need?”

“Thanks, no, but I have a tidbit for you, if you don’t already have it.”

“I’m listening.”

“Bats now has a high-end chop shop—Porsches and Mercedeses—in Red Hook. And he makes a practice of driving his merchandise before he chops it.”

“That’s very interesting,” Donatello said. “I and the department thank you. I’ll be sure the chief hears about it, too.”

Stone hung up happy, having both learned something to his benefit and done his duty as a citizen.

• • •

Jack Coulter, née John Fratelli, was lunching at a table at the Breakers beach club with Hillary Foote when he saw a familiar face. He did not like familiar faces, especially since this one seemed to be looking for someone.

He riffled through his recent memories—this face seemed a recent memory—in search of a locale in which to place the face, and finally it came to him. Burger King. On the day that he had received an envelope, fat with new hundreds, from Manny Millman’s messenger, he had seen that face a couple of tables away, and it seemed to be interested in him, and its owner seemed, somehow, familiar.

He cast further back in his memory and attempted to place the face in his pre-prison existence. Ex-something, he decided: ex-cop, ex-FBI, ex-something, he wasn’t sure what. Fratelli’s appearance
had changed a great deal since that day at the Burger King: he was slimmer, tanner, and had a mustache and a good deal more hair, gray at the temples. He did not think of himself as recognizable in this setting by someone from his past. Still, he waited until the man’s back was turned, excused himself, and went to the men’s room, stopping to chat with an assistant manager long enough to tell him that he did not believe that man over there was a member of this club. When he came out of the men’s room, he caught sight of the fellow being escorted rapidly toward an exit.

“What are you looking so thoughtful about, Jack?” Hillary asked.

He was trying to put a name to that face, but he had not yet succeeded when the question brought him back to the present. “I was thinking about how wonderful you were last night,” he said. He meant it, too. It had been his first night in bed with a woman in more than twenty years, and the experience had more than lived up to his memories.

“You’re a sweet man in bed,” Hillary said, squeezing his hand.

“Thank you, my dear,” Fratelli said, and he forgot about the familiar face. “I’m going to do some shopping for a car this afternoon. May I borrow your good eye for beautiful things?”

“Of course you may,” she said.